Dallas Buyers Club

Dallas Buyers Club is a film about Ron Woodrof, a slick talking, homophobic, bare backing cowboy who live by his own rules. Living his rough and tumble style of life is all fun and games, until an on the job accident leads him to learn that he has HIV. What could have been a generic by the numbers biopic, is instead this tender, small scale film about human connections. The soul of the tale is captured in the three leads and how Vallee and his crew maneuver their gear to showcase, not only their vulnerability, but also their strength.

The greatest strength of the film really comes from its scope and lack of grandiosity, oddly enough this is also its biggest flaw, but more on that later. There is no national campaign, no fervor to turn the lead into the messiah with the world of the film. No, Borten and Wallack instead choose to center the story on a deeply flawed man, who makes a change in his community. Aside from several moments, where Woodroof feels more like the cog in a movement, you never get to see the impact of his actions beyond Dallas, but in truth, that probably do more to hinder the film. It allows the work to breathe and accept its own surroundings. It allows the characters, leads, extras and everyone in between, to really lose themselves in the surroundings.

The writers seemed to have gone for this all along. Unlike American Hustle, which suffers from being a timeline Borten and Wallack prefer the smaller scale that makes this film be more than a circus freak show of lights and extravaganza. Part of this is how they don’t flood the film with scene stealing, yet ultimately over-bloating characters. Dallas Buyer Club does have a big cast, but they always get their time and it is always meaningful. Why? Because they serve to drive the thematic core forward. Steve Zahn’s character for instance, ultimately a minor character, but one who serves to work as an audience guidepost to the progression of Woodroof throughout the film. Really, unlike American Hustle, Dallas Buyers Club knows how to use its characters to serve the plot. It also helps that a wide number of real life people where sewn together to give us these detailed, if only fleeting, portraits of those who were there at the start.

It is in this atmospheric environment that we really get to experience why this film is so lauded, the performances. Matthew McConaughey is a dazzling delight. His gaunt, emaciated look is only part of what makes him great in this role. Yes, it is immediately arresting and it is always stunning to see what a dedicated actor will go through for something they believe in, but Matt brings more than that. His vast experience in rom-coms and his forays into thrillers from the nineties have given him a strong sense of timing that he brings perfectly to this. He brings soul and conviction to his lines and movements. McConaughey perfectly captures the transformation from ignorant homophobe, to educated activist without losing the audience in his wake. The ingrained tics from the start of the film remain, even if the outlook has changed.

Jennifer Garner too has a strong role as Dr. Saks. Sadly overlooked, Garner is sandwiched between two juggernaut performances. The role itself is pretty generic, the amiable doctor with a heart of gold but Garner brings to it a sense of earnestness and fire that helps it rise above mediocrity. When you first meet her in the film, with her eyes alone, she is able to portray what her character has seen and lived through. Like with McConaughey, Garner has this cocoon that dissolves slowly throughout the film, letting in not only other characters, but us, the viewers as well. It’s a terrible shame that her role was overlooked, even if it is for the simply reason of her co-stars doing such an amazing job. Frankly speaking, she should have taken Amy Adams’ spot on the awards nomination docket.

The final performance to speak of is Leto. Jared Leto, why did you ever think that leaving acting to sing for some shitty emo band was ever an option?  His role as Rayon, is one of those roles that will define him for the rest of his career and rightly so. The depth of the performance is staggering. The physical and personal transformation is like Bale at his best. Dropping all sense of identity, Leto melts into the role and creates this beautiful human, with their own glories and failures. His performances does not rely on hokey fun or shock value but rather it relies on finding the clicks and patterns. From the way he strikes up small talk to the way he moves, everything seems to have this deeply real flow too it. Mix that with the soft spoken ferocity that intimates a level of suffering without ever spelling it out and what you have is an iconic performance. The role is made all the more better as the characters and the audience learn that there is no happy ending. They are all wearing masks, the only difference is that Leto is allowed to break that mask and show us the pain and fear that is just sitting beneath the surface.

Credit must also be given to Jean-Marc Vallee, as a director he saw this small, intimate tale of woe and faceless bureaucracy and brought it to the screen with a magical touch. The choice of camera movement through the scene to ultimately maximize the impact of each scene is done stupendously.

All this gushing praise said and done, one must also consider that, due to the scale of the film, and the constant impending sense of doom, the tension kind of fizzles out by the end and the ending itself is kind of flat. Unlike Philadelphia, there is no grand zeitgeist type feel that will ever really take you away. I always found myself sitting there, knowing I was watching a movie, even if the characters seemed real. Secondly, when the end does come, it kind of just happens. The buildup is flat and the catharsis just is not there. It’s more of a whimper to the bang that these films have drawn us to expect. But I guess, it’s not really there in real life either when you can see your expiry date around the corner, rather than on the horizon.

Part of the heart break watching this film, is watching the ignorance of Woodroof slowly disappear as his misconceptions wash away, before realizing that this type of problem still exists. The film at its best highlights, not only how much we’ve overcome, but also how little we’ve come over the past thirty years. As heart breaking as this film may be, it truly is deserving of two hours of your time.